Recycling: Looking forward to a few more hours of daylight after work

By Nan Kirlin

Published: Friday, March 7, 2014 at 02:26 PM.

In our world today and regardless of your work or school hours, most of us arise early enough in the morning to necessitate electrical light, or we arrive home in the evening late enough to need artificially powered lighting to accomplish all the chores we need to do for our lifestyle. But just knowing that you can get home after work or after school and have a few more hours after the evening meal to enjoy some daylight is energizing and nudges us to get outside and enjoy the beauty and colors of the lengthening evening.

So, what will you do with your extra hour? Maybe this is the time to start a small garden? Because March 9 is really early in the season, you can dig or build a garden, and by the time the ground warms, it will be time to plant a summer garden.

How about constructing those compost piles? Check out this website for composting at home: www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/ultimate-compost-bin.

How about getting some exercise in, walking for a healthier you? You may want to wear light colors so as the daylight lessens, you will be easier to see along walkways or roadways.

The spring is always a great time to get projects underway – exterior painting, repair to your home, adding insulation, de-cluttering, or maybe just enjoying the extended daylight hours and catching up on reading outside. I know that between our small gardens that will need compost added and mixed into the soil, our chicken yard that needs some attention after this winter, our small fish pond that has overgrown with lily pads, two dogs that will want to be outside and be walked, a gas grill that loves to grill fish, veggies and burgers and an inviting back deck, I will find plenty to do to keep me out of doors this spring.

It’s “that” time again – Daylight Saving Time, “DST,” or Eastern Daylight Time, “EDT” – a sure sign of the pending spring. I hope!

Ben Franklin came up with the idea of shifting time to reflect better use of the natural light in 1784, but it was the insistence of the major railroads that pushed for uniform time throughout Europe and eventually the United States.

Back in the day of the agrarian society, people functioned by daylight. They got up with the chickens, sheep and cows, did chores, tended fields, cared for families and, interestingly enough, while crops were in their growth phase, there was extended daylight. The natural world existed without the use of standardized time.

With the arrival of the industrial revolution, the concept of time changed – shift work, transportation needs, wages per hour, and thus, the need for normalized time.

When Franklin made a suggestion to “shift” time for better utilization of daylight, his world was dependent on natural light, and how to better use everyone’s available time.

In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Uniform Time act of 1966, and instituted Daylight Saving Time. The designation shifted time one hour forward in the spring, stealing one hour of daylight from the morning and adding that hour to the end of the day. Back in 1966, we “sprung forward” on the last Sunday of April, and returned to Eastern Standard Time (EST) on the last Sunday in October.

There was a change in Daylight Saving Time in 1986, and the “Spring Forward” time moved to the first Sunday of April. Then, because of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, enacted in 2007, the effective date of Daylight Saving Time once again changed to our present date, the second Sunday of March and return to Eastern Daylight Time the first Sunday of November.

In our world today and regardless of your work or school hours, most of us arise early enough in the morning to necessitate electrical light, or we arrive home in the evening late enough to need artificially powered lighting to accomplish all the chores we need to do for our lifestyle. But just knowing that you can get home after work or after school and have a few more hours after the evening meal to enjoy some daylight is energizing and nudges us to get outside and enjoy the beauty and colors of the lengthening evening.

So, what will you do with your extra hour? Maybe this is the time to start a small garden? Because March 9 is really early in the season, you can dig or build a garden, and by the time the ground warms, it will be time to plant a summer garden.

How about constructing those compost piles? Check out this website for composting at home: www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/ultimate-compost-bin.

How about getting some exercise in, walking for a healthier you? You may want to wear light colors so as the daylight lessens, you will be easier to see along walkways or roadways.

The spring is always a great time to get projects underway – exterior painting, repair to your home, adding insulation, de-cluttering, or maybe just enjoying the extended daylight hours and catching up on reading outside. I know that between our small gardens that will need compost added and mixed into the soil, our chicken yard that needs some attention after this winter, our small fish pond that has overgrown with lily pads, two dogs that will want to be outside and be walked, a gas grill that loves to grill fish, veggies and burgers and an inviting back deck, I will find plenty to do to keep me out of doors this spring.